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  5. "He is a man."

"He is a man."

Translation:On jest mężczyzną.

December 12, 2015



When is it Jest or Jestes.


jestes for you, jest for he/she


What does instrumental mean? I understand that it has a -ą at the end of it.


Well, as you probably know, Polish has 7 cases, which depend on the function in the sentence, the fact that certain verbs or prepositions need certain cases, etc. Without understanding them, you will not be able to learn Polish.

Now, Instrumental is a case that has three main meanings: one, that you use X as an Instrument; two, that you are doing sth "with X"; and three, in defining. At the beginning of the course, we focus on the third meaning.

First, I'd recommend taking a look here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16373167 - especially Parts 1 and 2.

Secondly, you can search for topics about cases in this post: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16296174

As for the -ą ending, it is true for nouns that end with -a in their basic, Nominative form. These are almost all feminine nouns and a few masculine ones. As "mężczyzna" means "a man", it is one of those masculine examples.


I thought the word man was in the Accusative...


After forms of the verb "być", object nouns are always in the Instrumental.

For more details, please see: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16373167/A-guide-on-X-is-Y-and-This-is-Y-constructions as mentioned above....


How does one conjugate verbs in Polish...?


Well, that's a very broad topic. I would suggest taking a look here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/13589661


Why doesnt it accept człowiek?


It does accept "człowiekiem", which is the correct form here.


In which cases do you use mężczyzna and mężczyzną ?


I wrote "on jest mężczyzna" and it gave it as correct, although this is indicative and it should be instrumental (as here above). Is indicative also correct in this case, and if so why?


Only "On jest mężczyzną" is correct.


Most people don't have the Polish keyboard, so they can't type the ą. It would accept it if you'll write 'on jest mezczyzna', which is completely incorrect.


That said, since it does make a big difference in Polish, you can use the onscreen buttons in the web interface, and lots of mobile keyboards allow accented characters. That doesn't really suffice for the timed tests, but your operating system may have a Polish mode available for English keyboards (certainly my Windows 8 version does).


This is like german where they have more than one pronouncition for the


It's not pronunciation, it's declension, i.e. having to do with cases.


The verbs jest and jestam seems really similar to their equivalent Persian verbs hast and hastam.


Well, both Persian and Polish are Indo-European languages, albeit with quite a bit of distance between them. Latin has "Sum" and "Est" for "Jestem" and "Jest"; English has "Am" and "Is" and it's still possible to see some connection.


HE is a man - TO (jest) człowiek/TO (jest) mężczyzna
He IS a man - Jest człowiekiem / JEST mężczyzną

(kto? co?) człowiek/mężczyzna (Mianownik - Nominative)
(kim? czym?) człowiekiem/mężczyzną (Narzędnik - Instrumental)


What's the difference between mężczyzna and mężczyzną?


"Mężczyzna" is Nominative; use it as the subject of a verb, or after "to". "Mężczyzną" is Instrumental; use it after the verb "jest".

See other comments on here for other answers....

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